Amazon’s Delivery Drones Are Crashing, and We Finally Know Why

Amazon, the multi-trillion dollar e-commerce monolith, seemingly cheaped out on on a key feature installed on its six-propeller delivery drones. Predictably, this backfired almost immediately. On a (lightly) rainy December day at the company's testing range in Oregon, not one but two Prime Air drones suddenly stopped spinning their propellers mid-flight and plummeted some 200 feet to the ground. The crashes, which destroyed both aircraft, happened within minutes of each other. And now, Bloomberg reports, we know why. According to documents from the National Transportation Safety Board, bad readings from the drones' onboard lidar sensors led the drones to believe they had already landed. Their software, thinking it was on solid ground, cluelessly cut off power to the propellers. But that's not all. After Amazon decided to remove them, the drones no longer had backup sensors that were equipped on older versions. And these probably would've prevented the drones from shutting down, per ... Read full article.